27 March 2009: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Government of Finland have established a €14 million partnership titled “Sustainable Forest Management in a Changing Climate.”
The partnership aims to assist developing countries in protecting forest resources and building livelihoods around sustainable forestry. The programme will enhance the collection and analysis of forest data, as well as bolster skills for sustainable forest management. Spanning four years initially, the programme will be launched with three to six developing countries as pilot cases, to be chosen in the coming weeks. Lessons learned will then be disseminated among FAO global networks. Jim Carle, Chief of Forest Resources Development Service of the FAO, noted that, without such knowledge, “it is difficult to act,” and highlighted the potential for the programme for both mitigation and adaptation. The programme’s outputs will be linked to the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD), as well as the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and Forest Investment Programme. [FAO Press Release] [ UN Press Release]